Gordon Highland

Your footage was recorded to the tape this way; it's nothing to do with your computer. If you were watching a 4:3 monitor on set it would be the same way until you pushed the 16:9 switch on the monitor. Your DVD authoring software will allow you to select 16:9 as the display type, which will tell the DVD player what to do, ie. letterbox on a 4:3 TV or squish anamorphic on a widescreen TV. That's why it looks normal when you play the DVD back on a computer drive, but not your raw or edited footage. Don't make the mistake of letterboxing to 4:3 while editing unless you're positive this is how you want it shown.

Carlos, please don't post the same question in four different forums.

I'm generally a word-for-word dictator when it comes to dialogue (my latest mockumentary here was like that), but in this type of situation, if you have really good actors that you trust, I'd say just give them an outline. Tell them point-a to point-b where you need a particular scene to go in order to maintain some contintuity and editing sanity, and maybe a couple of specific plot points and jokes you need to get in along the way, then let them take it home, workshop it with the other actors, and fill in the holes themselves. Odd are good that, since they'll be spending far more time in the skin of that person than you can, they could better tell what's appropriate or not. But maybe they're not inherently funny, and that's where you can help. Spend some time up front defining the characters very clearly with some depth, and that will give them the tools they need to take it from there. What I did was get everything exactly as scripted first, then with the remaining time asked them leading questions that let them riff and improv. All of this ended up in the outtake reel, but they're probably as funny as anything I came up with, just harder to weave into the story. And of course, if you're the ones shooting it, write it however you want to get across what you need to remember to recreate it. I'd only worry about formatting if you're sending it out; but for me, it's good practice to use that format all the time. Most actors aren't going to care very much, unless they're A-listers who see a zillion scripts.

If you're in a hurry and don't want to explore the camera, you can download the SCOPNORM setup file to your card and load that in; that's a good all-around setting. However, sounds like you're SOL for capture. You need a DV50 deck to play the tape back to get it into your Avid. . . So you're going to have to shoot in DV25 if you want to play it back in your 1800, and you won't get to see how truly great this stuff looks. If you have the new version of Adrenaline (HD aka 2.0), it will do a firewire capture of DV50 (when you get the deck) and remove the advanced pulldown on the fly. Be sure you're shooting in 24pA, not 24p for this. I'm not sure if the pulldown removal for DV25 was supported in Adrenaline 1.0; I assume it was, given the enormous popularity of the DVX100.

Sure, it's off-topic, but Flash 8 is gonna change the way we do video on the web. It's absolutely incredible. The player handles real-time alpha channels(!!), so our ability to get creative with the interactivity goes way up. Here's a great example (none of this is my work), where each "video" character is on a separate layer from their background, adding unique perspective depending on where you are on the page, of course all at much much smaller file sizes than a pure video would be. The new On2 codec also produces very watchable video even at around 56kbs. Check this out: Cool Flash 8 Intro And this piece which adds a neat interactive spin to the clichéd bullet-time effect. IKEA Me and my co-workers have done some prelim testing with real-time shadows and blurs that are interesting, too.

I took a one-week advanced lighting course there and it was quite excellent. Very long days, total immersion, and I learned a lot. I'm sure much depends on the instructor.

As others have stated, it's good to fill the entire window frame with even light, but an additional technique is to back up that light and its diffuser a few feet so that you still get this effect, but also put another light off to its side and shoot it directly through the window (no diffusion) at like a 45-degree angle. This gives you the best of both worlds: a uniform blown out window, but also a more realistic-looking, controllable source coming into the room for shadows and such.

A couple things. One, these files are pretty tiny compared with what a lot of video and film people deal with on a daily basis; multiply that by five. Two, to create a "video" DVD, not a data DVD like what you're talking about right now, you will have to compress the final version to MPEG-2 anyway, which is much smaller size that what you're working with right now. Even at that, though, you're really pushing it to get 90 minutes onto a single-layer DVD-R (the blanks that most people buy), because the bitrate (quality) will have to be pretty low. If you could put it on a dual-layer DVD (like most of the commercial movies you see on DVD) there's plenty of room for higher quality. And of course, you'd need a burner that could do dual layer. Yes, if you were just moving your working DV files from one computer to another via DVD that's not going to cut it, you'll need a portable hard drive or something.

I'd use your own music. Hey, it's another credit! Or you could always go the royalty-free route; for not very much money, you could probably find something with a very similar feel. Or rewrite your own music in a similar way without copying it. Flip some of the chords around, change the key, but use the same kind of instrumentation with a new melody. Honestly, the worst thing that would probably happen is a cease-and-desist. But you could forget about entering it into any festivals without the license. I don't think it's unfortunate at all that record labels (actually ASCAP and BMI) pursue these things; I wish they'd be even more aggressive about it. People want the value that familiar music adds, but they don't want to pay for it.

I have a feeling what this means is taking the camera head itself, and using the optional SDI out, running uncompressed into an external deck. The recorder, to a large degree, is what limits this camera. This technique has been recommended for composites and whatnot, although I couldn't say technically how it affects stop lattitude.

No, you can't completely trust the monitor for overexposure, more just for for ratios. It's in the menu under VF something or other, Zebra 1 and Zebra 2. If you have a waveform monitor, that would be ideal, because it would show you the full range. On a feature I'd say it's a must-have. I tend to underexpose everything just a tad with this camera, and I use Filmlike2 gamma most of the time.

I think you've just made my point for me. That's why I don't white balance, because I don't want that reference point shifting around. As soon as you do that, it can corrupt or confuse whatever you're adding to the equation afterward. I know what the preset looks like (by that, I mean the 3200 or 5600 filter without any compensation), and so I know what it will look like afterwards when I gel a light a certain way (even if I'm intentionally mixing CTs), almost like math. This comes in very handy to stay predictable for those occasional instances when I don't use a monitor. I learned to light that way. Sometimes when I'm done I will go into the camera menu and turn down the preset color temp number to warm it up if that's what I want. Other times, I'll just load in a scene file on the SDX900, and use the monitor by eye for everything else. I totally agree; it's like choosing a film stock and adding or mixing whatever's necessary to get the correct image. If I were shooting in a factory or a gym or something with none of my own lighting instruments or a monitor, I would absolutely white balance.

This video is featured on his "Director Label" DVD that you can pick up at many retail outlets, and there's a making-of doc on there, but I don't remember specifics. It has a booklet included as well, but I rented it, so I don't know what exactly is in it. DVD

Yes, I think you've got it. It depends. I personally haven't white balanced (in the usual sense) in a couple of years. Instead, I use the presets in the camera combined with appropriate lighting instruments, gels, and filters. To me, that gives a much more predictable result. And I will sometimes white balance on a 1/4 blue or orange to get the opposite tint in-camera. I just put the gel over my white card. My camera also has a 4400 filter, which is wonderful for those pesky fluoros, or just warming up a tungsten-lit scene.

Sorenson 3 is still kind of the standard, even though there's much better things out there. For decent quality I'd probably go with 400 kilobits video and 48 kilobits audio at 320 x 240 pixels. Sorenson Squeeze or Media Cleaner are great apps for this. The best I've seen so far is the brand new On2 compressor that's part of Flash 8; videos look really good even at less than 100 kbs!

"Penguins" just didn't really do it for me. I mean, it's not BAD or anything, and those who worked on it are certainly commended for the lengths they went to, but. . . maybe I just watch waaaaaay too much Discovery HD at home, but it didn't seem to be any better than most of those shows, so I didn't get what all the buzz was about. It's probably just because it had been awhile since a nature doco got much mainstream attention. I inevitably compare it to "Winged Migration" in that regard, which I thought was far superior in every way, and much more engaging. I think I'm gonna ask Freeman about narrating some of my home movies. . . Jeesh, how many is that for him now?

They could put a "power window" over the blue part to correct it, I suppose. Or yeah, just make everything a little blue and time it out. Or you could cut an orange gel and stick it to the screen. :) Yes, put dots on the corners for tracking. And yes, you could spot meter the screen if you wanted to, but I do it by eye (on video, obviously). What I meant about the "backlight time" is on the phone itself. You usually only get a few seconds of a bright (backlit) screen, and then the phone goes dimmer to conserve battery power. This can get very frustrating when shooting because it's hard to get set fast enough, so change this is the phone menu, usually under "Display" or something. Then again, on some phones the dimmed screen might be better for overall exposure anyway, but if it's going back and forth that's annoying (if they're pushing buttons for instance). Of course, all of this is only if you're shooting the phone naturally without tracking or replacing the screen. If you're going to track the screen, obviously you also need a source video clip to put on top of it later, which poses another challenge. Most of the commercials I've seen just fill the whole screen with video (I think the Jerry Jones V-Cast commercial does this) so that's no big deal, just use whatever you want (keep in mind the aspect ratio might be taller than it is wide), but in real life, there's still a "wrapper" around this video with things like the signal strength bars, battery meter, player progress bar, etc. You could have someone recreate these graphics at higher quality, or try getting the original graphics from the phone manufacturer (ha! good luck). I'm actually on the team that is working on delivering our company training videos directly to the phones for employees in the field. It's pretty exciting (with major limitations of course), because with the right programming I can actually set this up so that I can put a video or other content on any web site (not just ours), and just text message the URL to anyone I want to see it.

I agree completely. I'm not up on the latest features of Premiere (I gave up on v5), and I can't say which is functionally better at that level, but learning the Avid interface (which is not that difficult if you're a blank slate, but is quite different from other NLEs) could be a stepping stone to working on their higher-end systems that use very similar commands. One of the downsides to me is that Avid is so proprietary that it can be difficult to troubleshoot, and the error messages (although rare) can be very unhelpful. I don't care for the way its Media Manager works either, but people that are strictly Avid Editors might disagree with me. Avid is very efficient about maximizing realtime features (I work on an Adrenaline system, but have used Xpress). I still prefer FCP on a Mac to both of them, but Avid is my app for PC. Another one to consider that users really seem to love is Vegas. . .

This is pretty thorough; the guy is a well-respected uber-geek. adamwilt.com/DV.html

This what I do for a living, albeit for the competition. :P None of those screenshots are real, they're all simulated, and you'll be disappointed if you shoot it that way. You CAN get a decent image (I shoot them naturally for training and stuff), and they expose about right as-is but are too blue. The brightness of the phone can be adjusted, and you'll want to extend the backlight time. But for commercial use, you'll need to track the screen corners and put the video in later in post. Use tracking dots if you feel it's necessary.

Yes, it is. Apparently we can hear several f-words over the course of a football broadcast, but somebody's boobie pops out and all of a sudden everyone's concerned about "values." (yes, I realize one is staged and one isn't, but still. . .) We can't even make a decent horror film anymore, because it has to be PG-13 if they wanna get enough people in the theaters to justify their marketing budget. This is a country in which we beep out the word "hole" but KEEP the "a$$" part of it. Someone can get mutilated on screen, but if there's more than three inches of buttcrack showing, they'll cut it. Odd, indeed. I wish we had more European sensibilities when it came to cinema/broadcast. Well, sometimes, anyway. <_<

Allrighty. Got the full version online now if anyone's still interested. Again, I thought you guys might particularly enjoy it because there's lots of "inside" industry humor. . . there's a little bit of crude language, so you might want to use headphones if in mixed company. "Featurette"

Not that I have much experience with this sort of thing, but tips that come to mind are: a warm set, robes, some wine, breath mints, and ice cubes on standby. Rehearse as much as you can in advance with clothes on or in private; it's not the kind of thing where you (ok, "they") are going to want to do a bunch of extra takes. Multiple cams could help. You could always put the rest of the crew in their underwear (good luck).

There's a link over there on the right for FilmTools; they carry it.

I agree completely. That's how it is for actors, and it's in their contracts I can't just use some old footage I have lying around of someone and pop it into a new project without permission and compensation; their likeness has to be re-licensed again every time it's repurposed. Check out the agreements for stock footage companies on their web sites. I doubt there's much you can do this time around if it's "work for hire," but it can be stipulated in the future. I had some stern words for a couple of old clients who tore apart my previous print designs for web sites and other new collateral they didn't want to pay me for.